Nearly half of the population in the country has fallen below the poverty line, reveals a recent study conducted by the Department of Economics and Statistics at the University of Peradeniya.
In January this year, the number of poor people in Sri Lanka was 3,042,300. That number has now increased to 9,690,000, states Prof. Wasantha Athukorala, a senior professor in the Department of Economics and Statistics at the University.
He has said that there was no change in the number of families suffering from poverty from January 2019 to December 2021but poverty increased greatly during the period from January 2022 to July, which was the month of his study.
By 2019, 681,800 families were below the poverty line, and it was 750,000 by the end of 2021. According to him, in the last seven months, the number of families going under the poverty line has increased to 2,422,500. According to the Senior Professor, at the beginning of the year 2021, the minimum cost of living per person for a month was Rs. 7,919 and by July 2022 it has become Rs. 13,138.
According to that, by the end of 2021, an average family’s minimum monthly living cost was Rs. 29,278, which has now become Rs. 48,611.
The professor says that the Department of Population and Statistics conducts a survey on poverty every three years, and the last survey was done in 2019, and a survey should have been carried out this year. However, the department is not conducting the survey this year, so he conducted it.
He also says that the purpose of his study was to investigate the truth and falsity of the information recently released by the World Bank about Sri Lanka.

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